America's Next Top Band Member
JUST SO EVERYONE KNOWS. look_alive AND I ARE TERRIBLE INFLUENCES ON EACH OTHER. ALSO THIS IS THE CRUDEST TYPE OF NOT!FIC. Also I laughed until I cried, during the 24 hours we spent tagging each other on her journal doing this shit.
Title: I Was Hiding Under Your Porch (Because I Love You)
Perpetrators: manipulant and look_alive
Characters/Pairings: Ryan Ross, Spencer Smith, Brendon Urie, Gerard Way, Frank Iero, Travie McCoy, William Beckett/Gabe Saporta, unresolved/unrequited Pete/Patrick
Warnings: not!fic, ridiculousness, cartoon violence, Tyra Banks, painted dicks, facial piercings, torturous levels of Dashboard Confessional
Summary: Tyra Banks & Co have the wonderful/terrible idea of starting an ANTM season with just bandboys as contestants. ...This works out really well.
Superheroes/Villains Week
look_alive:
So the cast list:
Ryan Ross
Gerard Way
William Beckett
Pete Wentz
Brendon Urie
Gabe Saporta
Travie McCoy
Frank Iero
Spencer Smith
Patrick Stump
Like, I just woke up one day and just needed a Ryan vs. Gerard STRUT-OFF in front of Tyra, like, /divastaaaare >:|||||||||||| with like, REALLY AMAZING MAKEUP between the two of them. And by "makeup" I mean probably face painting.
And Pete and Patrick would have to each have their own handler to follow them around and restrain them from making grievously traumatizing and yet wildly separate fashion choices to the judging panels.
And Travie and Gabe, just... Travie and Gabe. ♥ GURLFRANS until they aren't, and then a bitch gets taken out back, but then next episode they're wearing each others' shoes again.
Frank would probs be first cut from the season, but then he'd probs cut Tyra.
And there would have to be a Ryan vs. Brendon showdown with some CRAZY EYES that would get all intense and catty until Spencer flounces by them doing his thang and somehow ends up making final four without anyone really realizing what's going on. Including him.
Beckett is just fucking beautiful and TALL and GRACEFUL (when he's not trying to be. When he is... uh. Well. The words "impaired baby giraffe" leap to mind.). But mostly the beautiful and tall and graceful and he's adorable and everyone would LOVE HIM because he's him and he's precious and he'd wander out for judging with his guitar and someone would probably have to be on hand to gently take it off his hands until elimination is over.
manipulant:
like, no, okay, can there be an episode where they have to do a shoot with ~SCARY CREATURES~? And Frank, like, goes ballistic because it JUST SO HAPPENS that he has to take a picture with like a fucking TARANTULA and he is like NO. NO. FUCK THAT BIGASS HAIRY SPIDER AND FUCK YOU, TYRA BANKS. YOU HAVE A HUGE FOREHEAD. GOOD DAY, SIR. and he flounces?
And Gerard is, like, super Andrej Pejic and tyra is all CHA-CHING, BITCHES! FINALLY ONE THAT'S BANKABLE! except then gerard has, like, an assignment where he thinks the process isn't very focused so he like, redoes all his makeup and hair and is all YAY I'M GOTH SUPERMAN :D :D :DDDD and the judges are like "...but your assignment was the covergirl commercial" and gerard is all I KNOW RIGHT! PEOPLE REALLY WON'T BE EXPECTING THAT! :DDDDD and tyra is all >:| gurl.
look_alive:
OHGODOHGOD GERARD-ANDREJ PEJIC. OHGOD TELL ME MORE! Like, how fast do you think he'd start in with the feminist ranting at judging sessions? And Tyra keeps yelling at the house bus driver all I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO CONFISCATE THAT CAPE BEFORE HE GOT OUT OF THE BUS?! while the bus driver is like, I DID, I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE KEEPS GETTING THEM! D:
I would watch the SHIT out of that Cover Girl commercial, jsyk.
And then a part of me just wants to see Patrick and Pete and Frank face down Gabe and Travie and William. ...Or else have a runway chicken fight with the shorts on the tall's shoulders. Everyone would die, but it might be worth it.
Frank would be all charismatic and awesome until someone, probably Brendon, thought it was a good idea to steal his Misfits shirt and modify it to wear for the next judging round. After that it'd be all fire trucks and sirens and WE HAVE HIM RESTRAINED, BRENDON. YOU CAN GET OFF THE ROOF NOW. WE'RE SENDING UP A LADDER.
Patrick would be the one who'd show up to judging and without fail EVERY TIME all the judges and Tyra would do a simultaneous WHATTHEFUCKAREYOUWEARING flinch. With the occasional fluke of a SNAZZTASTIC suit and some ridiculous bowtie that only he could pull off. Someone would probably have to confiscate and destroy the gloves, though. His last judging session would probably end in someone finally getting the balls to tell him that he isn't a 6'4 black man followed by Pete punching whoever said it.
And idk if you've been following Pete and Gabe's RAD BROMANCE on Twitter? But like, the house drama with those two OH MY GAWD. Especially when Patrick and William get all bitter.
manipulant:
HAHAHA YESSSSSS Gerard's feminist ranting, OHMYGOD, like, I imagine it probably starts the minute they try to get him into, like, PINSTRIPES. or any menswear that doesn't make him look like an overgrown crow or a flea market regular and he's all FUCK YOU, WHERE ARE THE WOMEN'S CLOTHES, THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT. so J takes him to the women's rack and he is immediately much happier because LOOK! LOOK, FRANKIE, SEQUINS.
and so whatever clothes-people they have on set for the shoot are like HELL YES 8DDDDD and just shove him into the weirdest combinations of clothing they think they can get away with and Gerard PULLS THEM ALL OFF, WITH APLOMB, and so at the judging Tyra is all .......well okay, and Nigel is VERY CONFUSED AND NERVOUS because there is a photo or two of Gerard in a slinky short DRESS and he looks HOT and Nigel DOESN'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK. And Miss J GIVES HIM A STANDING OVATION, OH, BABY YOU JUST DON'T KNOW HOW GOOD IT DOES HIS HEART TO SEE THAT SWEET YOUNG MAN WALKING IN THOSE FUCK-ME PUMPS.
meanwhile everyone else is like >:| because yet again, it has turned into the Gerard Way Show. And for next week's assignment when they have to be shot in pairs, Brendon and Ryan put a temporary stop to their season-long slapfight to BEAT GERARD AT HIS OWN GAME, because THEY HAVE BOTH WATCHED THIS SHOW ENOUGH TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IS COMING, THIS IS THE WEEK WHERE THE PHOTO SHOOT IS SUPER HOMOEROTIC, WHERE THEY SEPARATE THE MEN FROM THE BOYS, ETC. so Brendon and Ryan are all >>>>>>>>>>>>>>:|||||||| WE GOT THIS. And everyone is SHOCKED during their shoot, except for Gabe who is all DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN, and Pete, who is watching on the sidelines eating a bag of potato chips offering helpful advice like "yeah, put your tongue there, awesome."
except nobody noticed that Billiam and Spencer got paired together because they were super quiet about it but then when it's their turn they fucking BREAK EVERYONE'S BRAINS by looking like HOT TOPLESS LESBIANS for half of their set. Janice Dickinson is super into it, for some reason she LOVES Spencer, like just absolutely loves his FACE, and nobody can understand why.
look_alive:
NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT PETE. he has someone on staff appointed to follow him with a straigh iron AT ALL TIMES okay, because as miss j says, "we just really don't want a repeat of this past february, mkay? nobody wants that."
so this homoerotic set- pete and patrick's would be this total awkward trainwreck to shoot because patrick spends the whole time trying to inch away surreptitiously from pete's advances of using him like a jungle gym,and their best pic is one of patrick looking super harassed, trying to fix his hair with pete trying to shove hands down his pants.
manipulant:
yesyesyesyesyes - and Gerard got paired with TRAVIE and immediately turned into a fourteen year old girl and couldn't stop giggling and exclaiming over the tattoos. which meant that Gabe and Frankie were paired together and they kept fucking around during their set, all anything you can do i can do better, til Frankie was being pinned by Gabe against a WALL, a foot and a half off the floor.
and the jays are like "this was the best idea we have EVER. HAD." And Janice Dickinson HEARTILY AGREES.
hahaha PEEEEEEEEEETE. YES he gets followed around with a straight-iron except he sort of thinks that the straight-iron kid is like his PA so he's giving the kid (who is an intern. named Robert), like, notes, and Bob is following him around all :| I do not get paid enough for this, pretending to listen to Pete remind him to remind him that he needs copies of all these photos for, like. Press packets.
and Spencer's like this sleeper hit, he doesn't start any drama so he doesn't get much face time with the cameras (except for when they catch him muttering these hilarious asides whenever somebody does something ESPECIALLY ridiculous). until SUDDENLY it's the FINAL FOUR and it's him and Gerard and Bill and Ryro and they go on their SUPER AWESOME TRIP to like. ...idk, Milan. and Spencer and Ryan get into a huge fight and then when they're supposed to be doing their go-sees, Ryan and Gerard and Bill get super distracted by, like, having coffee/tea and talking about books and looking louche and way too cool in sidewalk cafes, and Spencer is all FUCK ALL YALL BITCHES and has google mapped everywhere they're supposed to be going and is a hit with all the houses he goes to and gets hit on by Donatella Versace which terrifies him.
look_alive:
OKAY SO.
Can we just take a sec to appreciate the HILARIOUS HEIGHT DIFFERENCE between Gabe and Frank? There's gotta be about a foot there, easy. And Frank just sees the situation/Gabe as his own personal monkey bars fun time and half the pictures end up looking like some Cirque du Soleil shit. By the end of the season, Tyra's given the boom mic operator permission to use a low-voltage taser on Gabe if he does the "fangs up" thing in one more pic.
OHSHIT and okay, so Gerard and Travie, right, and Gerard's HOMG TATTOOS thing? He disappears for forty minutes before their segment of the shoot and comes back COVERED in those twenty-five cent truckstop tats from a vending machine and looking more than anything like a lifer from a women's high-security prison, which Travie jumps on immediately and there are a lot of bars and chains and handcuffs in all of their shots.
Brendon and Ryan's season-long slapfight-cum-occasional-alliance. Two words: BODY. GLITTER. There would have to be that one requisite episode where the guest judge is all, NO NO GUYS COME ON LET'S USE THIS LET'S USE IT and they win the round with a candid pic of Brendon singing showtunes and Ryan mid-lunge at him, still holding a mascara wand while Intern Bob has been hurriedly conscripted into tossing handfuls of rainbow glitter through a fan at them.
Speaking of Intern Bob. Can we talk about the makeover he'd receive at the hands of Pete one night at like, 4am when everyone else is asleep and the risk of bodily harm in response his drawing on their faces with sharpie has finally become too high?
manipulant:
AND THEN THE TASER GOES MISSING. and everyone side-eyes Brendon and Brendon tries his DAMNEDEST to look innocent but then Spencer's like "B. Come on." and Brendon siiiiiiiiiighs and gives it back. like just produces it from somewhere on his person right at that moment and somebody is all "...no, seriously, where was he KEEPING that?"
YESYESYES HEIGHT DIFFERENCE. and frank is THE HAPPIEST FRANK EVER when he is on Gabe's shoulders, all LOOK I AM A GIANT, I CAN SEE THE OCEAN FROM HERE, except gabe is getting wise to frank's game, so frankie has to, like, keep promising him stuff, so by the end of the season frank owes him like 36 hours straight of fellatio and gabe's starting to talk about his basement and how frankie will love it there, until finally bill rescues him via a handle of Jack and a winsome smile.
(can i just. I don't know whose fault it is that my mental William Beckett is like a super mellow version of Stefon from SNL, but it's really fucking freaky. like okay YOU imagine billiam talking about human parking cones and Blingo. anyway he would be the best city correspondent.)
BODY GLITTER YES. also for a bit, bden and gerard and frankie team up to be SUPERHERO MODEL FRONTMEN, like that is the name of their group (brendon campaigned HARD to call it Blue Steel), and for a terrifying night or two brendon gets REALLY INTO leathermouth, like just super enthralled with watching frankie thrash around. until ryan fixes him with a GLARE and says "Never. Ever. EVER. at one of our shows." and brendon's all GOD WHY ARE YOU THE OPPOSITE OF FUN. and then he hides ryan's makeup.
oh god Intern Bob's makeover, which he actually takes pretty well, I'm thinking? like, he lets Pete do it, and he doesn't kill him after, but Pete finds that all of his eyeliner and sharpies are missing the next night? and patrick stealthily slips bob a twenty.
LOLING FOREVER AT GERARD WAY: JAILBIRD. OH MY GOD. CHARACTERIZATION RINGS TRUE. LOLOLOLOLOL. ALSO AT SOME POINT THERE HAS TO BE A SCARE WHERE GERARD STUPIDLY LIGHTS A CIGARETTE WHILE HE'S IN HAIR AND MAKEUP AND COMES DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO SETTING HIS OWN FACE ON FIRE. but it only serves as FUEL FOR HIS CREATIVE FIRE, because after that he's like HEY HANG ON can we make it look like my eyebrows DID get singed off? And can we make my hair look all fried and crazy? (Hair girl: done and done. Seriously when was the last time you washed this shit. >:\) And he's SUPER INTO HIS VISION until spencer floats by and takes one look and says "Gerard. You look like an albino Whoopi Goldberg." and frank LAUGHS FOREVER. UNTIL HE ALMOST PUKES.
look_alive:
Yeah, but the next week while nobody was watching, Brendon discovered eBay and all of a sudden he starts producing all this random self-defense combat shit from nowhere. Like, "Hey, so how about in this shoot you get me working the pepper spray canister? NO NO FUCK WAIT HEAR ME OUT SHIT NO OKAY okay like, then you go back in and Photoshop it so instead of pepper spray coming out, it's GLITTER SPRAY! YES? YES??" And all of a sudden Intern Bob has another model to babysit.
...Which is great for Pete, who's been having a really difficult time understanding that "Patrick's shoot" does not, in fact, infer "Patrick and Pete's shoot". Somewhere there's like, half a video card with Patrick looking all pensive and bow-tied with these random tattooed limbs flailing around in the background as Pete is dragged out of yet another frame.
I can actually see Tyra going with it and having a comics-theme week. Like, where the models get to make up their own superhero identity or whatever, or like, based off the series of their choice. Frank would beeline straight for Walking Dead, while Pete would sucker Patrick into a Ramona Flowers for his Scott Pilgrim. Patrick just goes along with it for the sixty different hair colors (hair/makeup start demanding hazard pay) and rollerblades.
And YEAH, BASICALLY. SUPERHERO TRIO. Maybe Frankie would do that instead of Walking Dead, just to be in with Gee, idk. There would be CAPES and SPANDEX and MASKS, only Frankie would start eyeing the sequined nylon leggings Gerard and Brendon are fighting over like, UM. THE SECOND EITHER OF YOU SO MUCH AS THINKS ABOUT PUTTING ME IN ANYTHING LIKE THAT... But he ends up with this totally rad, grungy Frank Miller vibe, fucking COVERED in nasty, chunky fake blood. Miss J has to be excused to the bathroom twice before judging can happen.
OH. SIDENOTE- I feel like we need to talk about that inevitable week that the guest judge is Bjork. Ryan Ross would punch everybody in the FACE until he won that round. IN. THE. FACE. He did not pick up that roadkill pigeon off the sidewalk, hit it with a bedazzler, and use it as a corsage for nothing okay OH MY FUCKING GOD, PEOPLE. This is about art.
(So I've been saying this my whole life but I WISH I WATCHED SNL. I just... haven't really, ever. An ep here and there, sure. I know about Ms Swan..? and The Mango. Which I know are WAY ancient. And of course Andy Samberg and that whole thing and how basically Justin Timberlake is the best thing ever. But otherwise I'm fucking clueless.)
Speaking of basements. Gabe appropriates the model house's basement as His. Even if it's just like, a skeezy, undeveloped storage space. He fucking MAKES THAT SHIT HAPPEN, because it's all about branding, alright? It's all about fucking branding. So he's got a nest down there with like, three or four pet snakes and a space heater and he keeps trying to throw parties down there, but it usually just ends up being Bill and Travie and Pete and a WHOLE LOTTA BOOZE and eventually someone has to step in and explain the difference between "branding" and "liver failure".
Oh so okay- Brendon and Ryan and slapfight and DUH, but like. What about Ryan vs. Bill? Because YOU KNOW THAT SHIT'S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG. If by "donkey kong" we mean "femme-y boys spend entire season of ANTM trying to sabotage each other with breaks to get drunk and make out a little". There's this one week where whatever theme was supposed to happen gets derailed in favor of a "fight club" look, since Ryan and Bill both have black eyes and bloody lips and if hair and makeup make one more demand, Tyra's gonna have to start taking pay cuts. Unfortunately, nobody told the producers about Ryan's Chuck Palahniuk Thing.
OHGODOHGOD GERARD. FIRE. And his poses. Just. The crazy hip-swish shit he'd try to get away with. Just. You know there'd be stop-motion sequences where Frank or someone got hold of the camera in a break and shot frame-for-frame of Gerard doing a hundred-yard pelvic thrust.
Spencer Smith is not getting enough attention here. And yet all I see when I close my eyes is his STRUT.
manipulant:
Okay so for superhero week, Spencer dresses as Catwoman. which makes pretty much everyone feel funny in their pants. \o/ BECAUSE SPENCER IS THE DARK HORSE. (Brendon especially feels funny in the pants area because Spencer has a WHIP and a UTILITY BELT so he's like. jealous as well as turned on. he has no frame of reference for this. what the everliving fuck.)
LOLOLOLOL BJORK LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL OHMYGOD. YES. Also YES to all of Ryan's slapfights ever, he has them with EVERYONE, except for Spencer because he's pretty sure Spencer would just coldcock him instead of slapping, and except for Patrick, because Ryan's pretty sure he'd just be DEAD because Patrick is a fierce little fucker.
PETE IN THE BACKGROUND, being yoinked out of frame. LOVE IT. like it becomes such a problem that eventually the photographers allot the time and money to spend on patrick's photos, coming up with ideas on how to photoshop pete OUT of the pictures. so it always looks like patrick's working with a lot of props - bouquets of sunflowers, balloons, very large dogs - but really it's either that or look at pete wentzfacing all over everything.
(hahahahahahaaaa, balloons. "Patrick, it's like you're the old dude in Up! You're even wearing the same clothes as him!")
GABE'S MAKESHIFT NAKED PUZZLE BASEMENT, like one time Brendon wanders down there with Pete and the next time anyone sees him, Brendon has a tattoo he doesn't remember getting, and his dick is painted purple. and it takes like three weeks for the paint to completely wear off. gabe says it was just some lighthearted hazing, and then ryan smacks him (by now it's a force of habit) and drags brendon away and bob has to intervene.
nobody was really expecting the Fight Club thing to be any good, but Bill and Gabe have this AMAZING photo where they're sitting on opposite sides of a fold-out table and Gabe is actually the buttoned-up narrator and Bill - fucking BILL - is Tyler Durden, taping up his swollen, bloody knuckles, a cigarette dangling from his busted lip. Frank has to take a moment or ten, because hnnnnnnngh.
HAHAHAHA TIME-LAPSE GERARD HIP-SWISH. where Gerard is all flustered and "SHUT UP, ASSHOLES, GOD" and Ryan is all "WHAT WERE YOU TRYING TO NUDGE OUT OF THE WAY, THERE? NEBRASKA?" and of course frankie cannot stand for that (especially since mikey isn't here to take up for gerard as well) so he's all YEAH THAT'S SO MUCH WORSE THAN HOW YOU POINT AT THINGS WITH YOUR DICK, ROSS. and ryan is all GASP, HOWDAREYOU, SIR, and patrick's all ...well, but. I mean. technically, isn't everyone sort of pointing at something with their dick? if only just the floor? because it's a vaguely pointy shape.
and everyone looks at him, all ......... until patrick's beet-red and pete's all tell me if your dick is ever pointing at me, please, and patrick punches him. spencer announces that they talk about dicks too much.
also let's talk about the week where Sarah Burton from McQueen is a SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME GUEST JUDGE and most of the dudes are all "...yay?" except for Pete and Gerard, who are both about to shit their pants.
look_alive:
Brendon gets overexcited and tries to ditch Gerard and scrap the sequin tights in favor of a Batman getup, but Gerard catches on almost immediately and gives him a wise talk about how we must not abandon our visions, even in the face of love and/or black Lycra. Brendon grumbles, but gives in only in favor of waiting for cover of dark to break in to Spencer and Ryan's room through the window, wearing the Batman getup. Which is actually more like he gets up on the roof and tries to rig up a grappling device to rappel down and push the window open. It does not work as planned. He ends up hanging on by one hand, the other frantically dialing Patrick's number to PLEASE OH SHIT PATRICK GET UP TO THE ROOF AND HAUL ME UP I'M STUCK AND SPENCER'S WINDOW DOESN'T OPEN FROM THE OUTSIDE AND FUCK- FUCK THERE IS A WASP NEST UNDER THIS WINDOW, PATRICK. PATRICK THERE ARE WASPS. ...DON'T ASK QUESTIONS, JUST BRING A FIRST-AID KIT.
Dude, Patrick is a fierce little fucker. I mean, under the sweet, I-don't-want-to-be-snarky exterior? Kid could fuck a homeslice up. Oh, and I'd have like, $50 that Spencer punched someone (probably Ryan) in the penis at least once during the season.
(...Now I REALLY want a photoshoot of Patrick Stump and sunflowers. Only, not with this bleach blond shit he has going on right now. I miss the ginger.)
They make the Up joke, and Pete spends the rest of the week saying things like, "I was hiding under your porch because I love you, Patrick." and getting high-fives from Gabe.
Before the paint wears off Brendon's dick, he spends considerable time and effort trying to see if any of the photographers will shoot him wearing nothing but soaking wet Fruit Of The Looms. Someone really needs to give Intern Bob a raise. In the end, he takes the pictures himself using Spencer's iPhone, subsequently sending them to everyone in Spencer's phonebook. Only good things come of this.
I feel like we need to take a sec RIGHT HERE to address the Patrick-Pete-Gabe triangle. Which is technically the Patrick-Pete-Gabe-Bill... parallelogram. Not sure how much Twitter you keep up with, but Pete and Gabe are currently, like. Dating. So like, Pete's all, "TELL ME IF YOUR DICK IS POINTING AT ME!:DD" directly followed by Gabe all, "THREEWAY! :DD" and Bill's all "EXCUSE YOU?! >:(" and there's this big ruckus that culminates in Bill bursting into tears and running off dramatically, Patrick grabbing the straight-iron out of Bob's hand and semi-accidentally concussing Pete with it, and Gabe hesitating a second before tearing off after William all, "NO BABY COME BACK IT'S OKAY! I GOT A VALU-PAK OF TROJANS LAST TIME WE HIT COSTCO!" ~cut to a camera interview with a tearful Bill, sniffling and puffy-eyed, like, "I- I just thought Gabe and I had something, you know? I thought it felt real, but /divashrughairtoss/ I guess it's no big deal, wh- whatever." and all that's heard of him next episode is plaintive warbling emanating from his room that sounds a lot like off-key Dashboard Confessional.
YES. THIS. PERFECT. Gerard keeps following her around, like, "Can I touch you..? No. No I mean it. Can I?" and Pete shows up to judging dressed like a tree. Inevitably, she and Spencer end up tight, talking about shoes and classic lines and timeless use of color. Gerard's cam interview for that week is just twenty minutes of him gaping at the camera and making incredulous, wounded noises.
...They finally take pity and hire another intern. Intern Toro. Hired straight out of Starbucks next to one of the shoots for his hair and his ability to not kill every single contestant at 7am when they all order variations of triple-caf quad-shot skinny soy lattes with two and a half pumps of sugar free vanilla, seven shakes of nutmeg, and SO HELP YOU if those beans aren't fair trade.
Frank gets all riled up at Bill and Gabe’s photo and runs off to Gerard all, "GEE! FUCK. I WANT YOU TO HIT ME AS HARD AS YOU CAN." But Gerard being Gerard is like, "DDDDDD: NO!" so someone, probably Intern Bob, has to intervene before Frank runs himself headfirst into a brick wall "FOR AUTHENTICITY, YOU PUSSY BITCHES."
manipulant:
so Bob slips Frankie some of the makeup and frankie GOES TO TOWN trying to make himself look like he has TWO BLACK EYES except he uses like straight black instead of, y'know, ACTUAL BRUISE COLORS so he's all bummed out until ryan takes pity on him, grabs some white greasepaint from his mime shit and steals some red, and turns him into TDK joker.
so, y'know, frankie's not BUMMED anymore, but he is kind of clambering all over EVERYONE, asking them if they want to see him make a pencil disappear. and he totally freaked bill out because while all this shit was happening, billiam was trying to recover from his swoon by taking a nap on the sofa in a backroom and had no idea until all of a sudden there's a frank on his chest, leering at him, tapping a pencil against his forehead til he wakes up.
so bill SHRIEKS THE GIRLIEST SHRIEK EVER and jumps up, which catapults frankie off of him and frank totally beans his head on the edge of the coffee table as he falls, and gabe comes RUSHING IN THE ROOM, all OH FUCK BILL ARE YOU KILLED, FRANKIE, I WILL FUCK YOUR SHIT UP and bill's fluttering his hands, trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING, and gabe takes the opportunity to, y'know, sweep william out of this room of crazy and into the peace of ~THE BASEMENT so things are marginally patched up between them when they resurface. plus frankie has a wicked cool goose-egg on his forehead and an ACTUAL black eye from where he fell, so everything worked out really well!
anyway brendon's knowledge of comic books is sort of pastede on yey to begin with, which is a perfect opportunity for gerard to covertly make a hell of a lot of fun of him, so gerard occasionally calls him jason todd until somebody - let's say intern Toro - overhears and snickers and Brendon is all >:| WHAT and toro's all wikipedia that shit, B. so Brendon does and at like 2 am there is a SHRIEK OF RAGE and spencer really, really wishes he hadn't traded his roommate Patrick for a pair of jeans and some sweet wing-tips from Bill because rooming with brendon means no beauty sleep ever.
(and now i just really want to make a flowchart of the roommate-trading that happens, and the bargaining that comes with all the switches)
and Brendon is SUPER BUTTHURT and plots ways to get revenge on Gerard's stupid FACE except they all keep blowing up in HIS face - like the time he tries to sabotage gerard's shampoo with bleach until he realizes that gerard doesn't really USE it and then a week after the fact, gerard washes his hair and it winds up looking brassy and fucked-up and INEXPLICABLY COOL and everyone's all OOOOOOOOOH and brendon's all GODDAMMIT >:|
and then bill and brendon come up with the GREATEST PLAN. SERIOUSLY THE GREATEST. bill is still mad at gabe for, y'know, being GABE and therefore twelve feet tall and still somehow in pete wentz's POCKET, and brendon is mad at GERARD WAY AND HIS STUPID PERFECT FACE and they are both operating under the assumption that sitcoms are actually reality, so bill cheerfully cozies up to travie to MAKE GABE INSANE WITH JEALOUSY, and travie is all what? huh? ...oh, okay, cool.
and brendon starts USURPING ALL OF FRANKIE'S TIME and they are like DUO OF DESTRUCTION and NO ONE IS SAFE and brendon tries teaching frankie how to do backflips and frankie makes brendon mainline a bunch of black flag and ryan is all WHAT THE HELL IS EVEN HAPPENING HOLY FUCK and everyone wakes up one morning and brendon has facial piercings and he's all 8DDDDDDDDDDDDD WE DID THEM WITH SAFETY PINS, SO FUCKING HARDCORE and spencer THROWS A FIT BECAUSE THAT SHIT IS NOT SAFE and brendon's all god spencer stop being such a buzzkill.
but it all ends in craziness because brendon teaches frankie how to run up a wall but frankie tries to do it on like some flimsy drywall during a shoot and goes CRASHING THROUGH.
look_alive:
Yeah, Frank pretty much attacks the photographers for the comic shoot like, GUYS, GUYS WE'RE GONNA GET ME HANGING UPSIDE DOWN FROM GRAPPLING WIRE OKAY? and he's totally broken out the oldschool green hair dye.
William, in his own weird brand of hypocrisy, is doing the shoot as Scarecrow, but when anyone tries to give him shit he's "the sexy villain from Batman! Didn't anyone see Batman Begins? Cillian Murphy! Come on, guys, what?!" and Gerard has to be forcibly restrained so he doesn't say or do anything to incite the compensatory protective wrath of already-keyed-up Gabe.
ASDHJKL JASON TODD. Yes. And someone, we won't say who but it was TOTALLY RYAN leaves a crow bar in his bed. And there are all these innocuous comments about maybe he'd want to use it in the shoot later? before he starts threatening to go all Red Hood on their asses YEAH, YEAH THAT'S RIGHT DICKSMACKS, HE TOTALLY READ THROUGH THAT WIKI.
Gerard has this MOMENT OF GLORY when his hair bleaches and he calls Mikey later to confide that he thinks he might be developing super powers- finally - or else he's a really late-blooming metamorphmagus. Mikey hangs up on him for the sixth time that week, but sends a box full of Gerard's Gryffindor gear to him anyway, because he's nice like that.
manipulant:
(can we just talk about how upset Gerard was when he took sorting quiz after sorting quiz after sorting quiz on the internet back in the day and ALL OF THEM either put him in gryffindor or hufflepuff? Because VERY SECRETLY gerard was pretty convinced he was a slytherin. BUT A GOOD SLYTHERIN! LIKE SNAPE! and mikey patted him on the shoulder and said it was just the internet and gerard got all huffy and was like yeah okay it's fine for YOU, you fucking RAVENCLAW. and mikey smirked a bit.)
look_alive:
(YES. THIS. But Mikey totally made it better by getting Gerard a full set of Gryffindor regalia, followed by an hour-long speech about how green would just make him look pallid- no, not in the good way.)
So Brendon has to get carted off for tetanus shots in his everyplace, but ultimately he counts it as a win, because fucking GERARD that FUCKER sees the crazy shit they did with the safety pins and turns white as a sheet and pukes all over Gabe's brand new purple Supra hightops he just got as a gift from Justin Bieber, so pretty much everyone wins. Except Gerard and Gabe. And Justin Bieber.
Tyra flips out when she comes for a house visit and the walls are all covered in shoe prints, but it's put into perspective when she sees how Brendon and Frank have drained the pool to use as a skate park and Travie's seen this as an excuse for an "installation piece" in spray paint tagging.
William is still flitting around making eyes at Travie whenever Gabe's around, occasionally calling Nick Scimeca for romantic advice. This means Patrick gets to listen to William's end of a lot of phone conversations that inevitably lead to, "...but. But I don't wanna get a lower back tattoo. Isn't that called a tramp stamp? Can't I just wear really tight pants or something? No, I know, I mean tighter. Like Ryan's."
Which is how Ryan vs. William Bitchfight #83 happens, Ryan walking in on William in his room wearing one pant leg, two cans of extra virgin olive oil spray, and nothing else. The only reason anyone survives is because Patrick steps in at the last second with, "So Bill, when did you want me to help you rework Everything We Had in Garage Band?" and nobody sees either of them for fourteen hours.
Meanwhile, Ryan Ross: Loki, Tim Drake, or..?
manipulant:
I vote Ryan Ross for Penguin. because HAHAHAHAHA. Also I have this mental image of William and, like, Brendon grocery shopping together, Brendon trailing after William, touching every box they go past, half a twizzler stuck out of his mouth, and William stopping in the baking aisle and spending seriously 15 minutes debating over which nonstick cooking spray looks the most...nonsticky.
Brendon finds a turkey baster, so, y'know, he's pretty much set for the next half hour as far as entertainment goes. (if he sucks it onto his skin it makes funny noises!) also he suggests that instead of cooking spray, they just go and get some 10-40 and an atomizer and get this shit DONE.
anyway I feel like I'm ignoring Gabe. which I think could be the really hilarious focus of an episode while Gabe's still on, like the producers are all oh! Shit! The dude in the basement! What's his deal? And so they set up a couple of night-vision cameras and dedicate another camera to just following Gabe around, with Funeral March of a Marionette playing in the background, probably. and it's more like Meerkat Manor than anything that would ever play on Bravo.
BUT I DIGRESS okay SUPERHEROES. so when the dust has settled from Brendon and Frankie's reign of terror and Brendon's mostly cool with Gerard again but still sort of generally upset because there was a CROWBAR in his BED, motherfuckers! He's going to put a, a fucking...a fucking HORSEHEAD in ROSS'S bed, see how funny he thinks THAT is! (which makes a producer stroke their nonexistent beard and contemplate a Godfather-type episode, for all of two seconds before the probability of actual death of a contestant comes to mind.)
anyway so Brendon gives himself a CRASH COURSE in superheroes and stuff and eventually settles on a fucking ANTIHERO, MAN, and Gerard shambles by Brendon's room one afternoon and sees Brendon messing around with what looks like a Rorschach mask and Gerard's all .......aw, fuck, why didn't I think of that?
and Brendon stealthily hands intern Toro a twenty.
look_alive:
HAHA OH MY GOD. That might work by sheer virtue of about 2% of the viewer base for the show having ANY idea what's going on. Like, Sexy Penguin, where Ryro just gets to strut around in front of the camera wearing a tailed tux and rocking the shit out of a monocle and an old-fashioned umbrella.
In the aftermath of the whole nonstick-pants thing, Ryan is filmed around the edge of his door in the throes of high dudgeon. Spencer sitting on his bed and nodding occasionally through a glazed expression as Ryan splutters about "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO GET CRISCO OUT OF DESIGNER DENIM?!"
Gabe's crew quickly begin to sympathize with the interns, as he takes a page out of Pete's book and starts treating them like an entourage of PA's. Generally it's just a lot of, "Here, hold this." to the dude holding the mic, which is generally okay until it's time to feed Gabe's basement menagerie and mic guy ends up with five feet of python wrapped around his shoulders and a grass snake in each pocket.
Brendon is totally stoked on Rorschach and spends two whole days preparing and "getting in to character" by running around and leaping out at other contestants from dark corners in a rhinestoned Gucci trench. Gerard nearly loses his shit, but is saved from having to break his avowed pacifism by hair and makeup explaining to Brendon that there is no way he's doing a shoot with his entire head covered. In the end, he and Gerard end up right back where they started, in sequined Lycra monstrosities vaguely reminiscent of Kid Flash and Aquaman, respectively.
Saporta is coerced with relative ease into a Superman-type getup, once he realizes that it's basically a whole bunch of giant arrows calling attention to his crotch. He's fully on board the second techs start setting up suspension wires.
Which leaves Travie. Someone somewhere is a secret nerd, because he ends up in this totally understated Alex Wilder from Runaways getup that's mostly just some hipster glasses and the instructions to "Now give us evil. No, not the Jafar-face. Secret evil. Nobody knows what you're up t - OH FINE, JUST LOOK PENSIVE. CAN YOU HANDLE THAT?" At which point Gerard, who is- tragically, he feels- the only one who TRULY UNDERSTANDS WHAT IS GOING ON HERE storms the set and starts trying to give Travie a blow-by-blow of the first story arc, which quickly devolves into a lot of flailing hand gestures and shouting about velociraptors. The only way they're able to finish the shoot is because by the end, Travie actually does look murderous.
So the superhero shoot is basically a disaster, and nobody's really surprised, but in the end interns Bob and Toro count themselves the true winners of the round, having made about a grand apiece through a mixture of extortion, bribery, and information trade.
And the person who gets voted off that week is, oh, let’s say Travie.
IN CASE YOU MISSED THE LINKS IN THE BODY OF THE FIC, HERE, HAVE SOME EXTENDED SCENES. ALSO A FAKE TWITTER.
Title: I Was Hiding Under Your Porch (Because I Love You)
Perpetrators: manipulant and look_alive
Characters/Pairings: Ryan Ross, Spencer Smith, Brendon Urie, Gerard Way, Frank Iero, Travie McCoy, William Beckett/Gabe Saporta, unresolved/unrequited Pete/Patrick
Warnings: not!fic, ridiculousness, cartoon violence, Tyra Banks, painted dicks, facial piercings, torturous levels of Dashboard Confessional
Summary: Tyra Banks & Co have the wonderful/terrible idea of starting an ANTM season with just bandboys as contestants. ...This works out really well.
Superheroes/Villains Week
look_alive:
So the cast list:
Ryan Ross
Gerard Way
William Beckett
Pete Wentz
Brendon Urie
Gabe Saporta
Travie McCoy
Frank Iero
Spencer Smith
Patrick Stump
Like, I just woke up one day and just needed a Ryan vs. Gerard STRUT-OFF in front of Tyra, like, /divastaaaare >:|||||||||||| with like, REALLY AMAZING MAKEUP between the two of them. And by "makeup" I mean probably face painting.
And Pete and Patrick would have to each have their own handler to follow them around and restrain them from making grievously traumatizing and yet wildly separate fashion choices to the judging panels.
And Travie and Gabe, just... Travie and Gabe. ♥ GURLFRANS until they aren't, and then a bitch gets taken out back, but then next episode they're wearing each others' shoes again.
Frank would probs be first cut from the season, but then he'd probs cut Tyra.
And there would have to be a Ryan vs. Brendon showdown with some CRAZY EYES that would get all intense and catty until Spencer flounces by them doing his thang and somehow ends up making final four without anyone really realizing what's going on. Including him.
Beckett is just fucking beautiful and TALL and GRACEFUL (when he's not trying to be. When he is... uh. Well. The words "impaired baby giraffe" leap to mind.). But mostly the beautiful and tall and graceful and he's adorable and everyone would LOVE HIM because he's him and he's precious and he'd wander out for judging with his guitar and someone would probably have to be on hand to gently take it off his hands until elimination is over.
manipulant:
like, no, okay, can there be an episode where they have to do a shoot with ~SCARY CREATURES~? And Frank, like, goes ballistic because it JUST SO HAPPENS that he has to take a picture with like a fucking TARANTULA and he is like NO. NO. FUCK THAT BIGASS HAIRY SPIDER AND FUCK YOU, TYRA BANKS. YOU HAVE A HUGE FOREHEAD. GOOD DAY, SIR. and he flounces?
And Gerard is, like, super Andrej Pejic and tyra is all CHA-CHING, BITCHES! FINALLY ONE THAT'S BANKABLE! except then gerard has, like, an assignment where he thinks the process isn't very focused so he like, redoes all his makeup and hair and is all YAY I'M GOTH SUPERMAN :D :D :DDDD and the judges are like "...but your assignment was the covergirl commercial" and gerard is all I KNOW RIGHT! PEOPLE REALLY WON'T BE EXPECTING THAT! :DDDDD and tyra is all >:| gurl.
look_alive:
OHGODOHGOD GERARD-ANDREJ PEJIC. OHGOD TELL ME MORE! Like, how fast do you think he'd start in with the feminist ranting at judging sessions? And Tyra keeps yelling at the house bus driver all I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO CONFISCATE THAT CAPE BEFORE HE GOT OUT OF THE BUS?! while the bus driver is like, I DID, I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE KEEPS GETTING THEM! D:
I would watch the SHIT out of that Cover Girl commercial, jsyk.
And then a part of me just wants to see Patrick and Pete and Frank face down Gabe and Travie and William. ...Or else have a runway chicken fight with the shorts on the tall's shoulders. Everyone would die, but it might be worth it.
Frank would be all charismatic and awesome until someone, probably Brendon, thought it was a good idea to steal his Misfits shirt and modify it to wear for the next judging round. After that it'd be all fire trucks and sirens and WE HAVE HIM RESTRAINED, BRENDON. YOU CAN GET OFF THE ROOF NOW. WE'RE SENDING UP A LADDER.
Patrick would be the one who'd show up to judging and without fail EVERY TIME all the judges and Tyra would do a simultaneous WHATTHEFUCKAREYOUWEARING flinch. With the occasional fluke of a SNAZZTASTIC suit and some ridiculous bowtie that only he could pull off. Someone would probably have to confiscate and destroy the gloves, though. His last judging session would probably end in someone finally getting the balls to tell him that he isn't a 6'4 black man followed by Pete punching whoever said it.
And idk if you've been following Pete and Gabe's RAD BROMANCE on Twitter? But like, the house drama with those two OH MY GAWD. Especially when Patrick and William get all bitter.
manipulant:
HAHAHA YESSSSSS Gerard's feminist ranting, OHMYGOD, like, I imagine it probably starts the minute they try to get him into, like, PINSTRIPES. or any menswear that doesn't make him look like an overgrown crow or a flea market regular and he's all FUCK YOU, WHERE ARE THE WOMEN'S CLOTHES, THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT. so J takes him to the women's rack and he is immediately much happier because LOOK! LOOK, FRANKIE, SEQUINS.
and so whatever clothes-people they have on set for the shoot are like HELL YES 8DDDDD and just shove him into the weirdest combinations of clothing they think they can get away with and Gerard PULLS THEM ALL OFF, WITH APLOMB, and so at the judging Tyra is all .......well okay, and Nigel is VERY CONFUSED AND NERVOUS because there is a photo or two of Gerard in a slinky short DRESS and he looks HOT and Nigel DOESN'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK. And Miss J GIVES HIM A STANDING OVATION, OH, BABY YOU JUST DON'T KNOW HOW GOOD IT DOES HIS HEART TO SEE THAT SWEET YOUNG MAN WALKING IN THOSE FUCK-ME PUMPS.
meanwhile everyone else is like >:| because yet again, it has turned into the Gerard Way Show. And for next week's assignment when they have to be shot in pairs, Brendon and Ryan put a temporary stop to their season-long slapfight to BEAT GERARD AT HIS OWN GAME, because THEY HAVE BOTH WATCHED THIS SHOW ENOUGH TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IS COMING, THIS IS THE WEEK WHERE THE PHOTO SHOOT IS SUPER HOMOEROTIC, WHERE THEY SEPARATE THE MEN FROM THE BOYS, ETC. so Brendon and Ryan are all >>>>>>>>>>>>>>:|||||||| WE GOT THIS. And everyone is SHOCKED during their shoot, except for Gabe who is all DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN, and Pete, who is watching on the sidelines eating a bag of potato chips offering helpful advice like "yeah, put your tongue there, awesome."
except nobody noticed that Billiam and Spencer got paired together because they were super quiet about it but then when it's their turn they fucking BREAK EVERYONE'S BRAINS by looking like HOT TOPLESS LESBIANS for half of their set. Janice Dickinson is super into it, for some reason she LOVES Spencer, like just absolutely loves his FACE, and nobody can understand why.
look_alive:
NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT PETE. he has someone on staff appointed to follow him with a straigh iron AT ALL TIMES okay, because as miss j says, "we just really don't want a repeat of this past february, mkay? nobody wants that."
so this homoerotic set- pete and patrick's would be this total awkward trainwreck to shoot because patrick spends the whole time trying to inch away surreptitiously from pete's advances of using him like a jungle gym,and their best pic is one of patrick looking super harassed, trying to fix his hair with pete trying to shove hands down his pants.
manipulant:
yesyesyesyesyes - and Gerard got paired with TRAVIE and immediately turned into a fourteen year old girl and couldn't stop giggling and exclaiming over the tattoos. which meant that Gabe and Frankie were paired together and they kept fucking around during their set, all anything you can do i can do better, til Frankie was being pinned by Gabe against a WALL, a foot and a half off the floor.
and the jays are like "this was the best idea we have EVER. HAD." And Janice Dickinson HEARTILY AGREES.
hahaha PEEEEEEEEEETE. YES he gets followed around with a straight-iron except he sort of thinks that the straight-iron kid is like his PA so he's giving the kid (who is an intern. named Robert), like, notes, and Bob is following him around all :| I do not get paid enough for this, pretending to listen to Pete remind him to remind him that he needs copies of all these photos for, like. Press packets.
and Spencer's like this sleeper hit, he doesn't start any drama so he doesn't get much face time with the cameras (except for when they catch him muttering these hilarious asides whenever somebody does something ESPECIALLY ridiculous). until SUDDENLY it's the FINAL FOUR and it's him and Gerard and Bill and Ryro and they go on their SUPER AWESOME TRIP to like. ...idk, Milan. and Spencer and Ryan get into a huge fight and then when they're supposed to be doing their go-sees, Ryan and Gerard and Bill get super distracted by, like, having coffee/tea and talking about books and looking louche and way too cool in sidewalk cafes, and Spencer is all FUCK ALL YALL BITCHES and has google mapped everywhere they're supposed to be going and is a hit with all the houses he goes to and gets hit on by Donatella Versace which terrifies him.
look_alive:
OKAY SO.
Can we just take a sec to appreciate the HILARIOUS HEIGHT DIFFERENCE between Gabe and Frank? There's gotta be about a foot there, easy. And Frank just sees the situation/Gabe as his own personal monkey bars fun time and half the pictures end up looking like some Cirque du Soleil shit. By the end of the season, Tyra's given the boom mic operator permission to use a low-voltage taser on Gabe if he does the "fangs up" thing in one more pic.
OHSHIT and okay, so Gerard and Travie, right, and Gerard's HOMG TATTOOS thing? He disappears for forty minutes before their segment of the shoot and comes back COVERED in those twenty-five cent truckstop tats from a vending machine and looking more than anything like a lifer from a women's high-security prison, which Travie jumps on immediately and there are a lot of bars and chains and handcuffs in all of their shots.
Brendon and Ryan's season-long slapfight-cum-occasional-alliance. Two words: BODY. GLITTER. There would have to be that one requisite episode where the guest judge is all, NO NO GUYS COME ON LET'S USE THIS LET'S USE IT and they win the round with a candid pic of Brendon singing showtunes and Ryan mid-lunge at him, still holding a mascara wand while Intern Bob has been hurriedly conscripted into tossing handfuls of rainbow glitter through a fan at them.
Speaking of Intern Bob. Can we talk about the makeover he'd receive at the hands of Pete one night at like, 4am when everyone else is asleep and the risk of bodily harm in response his drawing on their faces with sharpie has finally become too high?
manipulant:
AND THEN THE TASER GOES MISSING. and everyone side-eyes Brendon and Brendon tries his DAMNEDEST to look innocent but then Spencer's like "B. Come on." and Brendon siiiiiiiiiighs and gives it back. like just produces it from somewhere on his person right at that moment and somebody is all "...no, seriously, where was he KEEPING that?"
YESYESYES HEIGHT DIFFERENCE. and frank is THE HAPPIEST FRANK EVER when he is on Gabe's shoulders, all LOOK I AM A GIANT, I CAN SEE THE OCEAN FROM HERE, except gabe is getting wise to frank's game, so frankie has to, like, keep promising him stuff, so by the end of the season frank owes him like 36 hours straight of fellatio and gabe's starting to talk about his basement and how frankie will love it there, until finally bill rescues him via a handle of Jack and a winsome smile.
(can i just. I don't know whose fault it is that my mental William Beckett is like a super mellow version of Stefon from SNL, but it's really fucking freaky. like okay YOU imagine billiam talking about human parking cones and Blingo. anyway he would be the best city correspondent.)
BODY GLITTER YES. also for a bit, bden and gerard and frankie team up to be SUPERHERO MODEL FRONTMEN, like that is the name of their group (brendon campaigned HARD to call it Blue Steel), and for a terrifying night or two brendon gets REALLY INTO leathermouth, like just super enthralled with watching frankie thrash around. until ryan fixes him with a GLARE and says "Never. Ever. EVER. at one of our shows." and brendon's all GOD WHY ARE YOU THE OPPOSITE OF FUN. and then he hides ryan's makeup.
oh god Intern Bob's makeover, which he actually takes pretty well, I'm thinking? like, he lets Pete do it, and he doesn't kill him after, but Pete finds that all of his eyeliner and sharpies are missing the next night? and patrick stealthily slips bob a twenty.
LOLING FOREVER AT GERARD WAY: JAILBIRD. OH MY GOD. CHARACTERIZATION RINGS TRUE. LOLOLOLOLOL. ALSO AT SOME POINT THERE HAS TO BE A SCARE WHERE GERARD STUPIDLY LIGHTS A CIGARETTE WHILE HE'S IN HAIR AND MAKEUP AND COMES DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO SETTING HIS OWN FACE ON FIRE. but it only serves as FUEL FOR HIS CREATIVE FIRE, because after that he's like HEY HANG ON can we make it look like my eyebrows DID get singed off? And can we make my hair look all fried and crazy? (Hair girl: done and done. Seriously when was the last time you washed this shit. >:\) And he's SUPER INTO HIS VISION until spencer floats by and takes one look and says "Gerard. You look like an albino Whoopi Goldberg." and frank LAUGHS FOREVER. UNTIL HE ALMOST PUKES.
look_alive:
Yeah, but the next week while nobody was watching, Brendon discovered eBay and all of a sudden he starts producing all this random self-defense combat shit from nowhere. Like, "Hey, so how about in this shoot you get me working the pepper spray canister? NO NO FUCK WAIT HEAR ME OUT SHIT NO OKAY okay like, then you go back in and Photoshop it so instead of pepper spray coming out, it's GLITTER SPRAY! YES? YES??" And all of a sudden Intern Bob has another model to babysit.
...Which is great for Pete, who's been having a really difficult time understanding that "Patrick's shoot" does not, in fact, infer "Patrick and Pete's shoot". Somewhere there's like, half a video card with Patrick looking all pensive and bow-tied with these random tattooed limbs flailing around in the background as Pete is dragged out of yet another frame.
I can actually see Tyra going with it and having a comics-theme week. Like, where the models get to make up their own superhero identity or whatever, or like, based off the series of their choice. Frank would beeline straight for Walking Dead, while Pete would sucker Patrick into a Ramona Flowers for his Scott Pilgrim. Patrick just goes along with it for the sixty different hair colors (hair/makeup start demanding hazard pay) and rollerblades.
And YEAH, BASICALLY. SUPERHERO TRIO. Maybe Frankie would do that instead of Walking Dead, just to be in with Gee, idk. There would be CAPES and SPANDEX and MASKS, only Frankie would start eyeing the sequined nylon leggings Gerard and Brendon are fighting over like, UM. THE SECOND EITHER OF YOU SO MUCH AS THINKS ABOUT PUTTING ME IN ANYTHING LIKE THAT... But he ends up with this totally rad, grungy Frank Miller vibe, fucking COVERED in nasty, chunky fake blood. Miss J has to be excused to the bathroom twice before judging can happen.
OH. SIDENOTE- I feel like we need to talk about that inevitable week that the guest judge is Bjork. Ryan Ross would punch everybody in the FACE until he won that round. IN. THE. FACE. He did not pick up that roadkill pigeon off the sidewalk, hit it with a bedazzler, and use it as a corsage for nothing okay OH MY FUCKING GOD, PEOPLE. This is about art.
(So I've been saying this my whole life but I WISH I WATCHED SNL. I just... haven't really, ever. An ep here and there, sure. I know about Ms Swan..? and The Mango. Which I know are WAY ancient. And of course Andy Samberg and that whole thing and how basically Justin Timberlake is the best thing ever. But otherwise I'm fucking clueless.)
Speaking of basements. Gabe appropriates the model house's basement as His. Even if it's just like, a skeezy, undeveloped storage space. He fucking MAKES THAT SHIT HAPPEN, because it's all about branding, alright? It's all about fucking branding. So he's got a nest down there with like, three or four pet snakes and a space heater and he keeps trying to throw parties down there, but it usually just ends up being Bill and Travie and Pete and a WHOLE LOTTA BOOZE and eventually someone has to step in and explain the difference between "branding" and "liver failure".
Oh so okay- Brendon and Ryan and slapfight and DUH, but like. What about Ryan vs. Bill? Because YOU KNOW THAT SHIT'S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG. If by "donkey kong" we mean "femme-y boys spend entire season of ANTM trying to sabotage each other with breaks to get drunk and make out a little". There's this one week where whatever theme was supposed to happen gets derailed in favor of a "fight club" look, since Ryan and Bill both have black eyes and bloody lips and if hair and makeup make one more demand, Tyra's gonna have to start taking pay cuts. Unfortunately, nobody told the producers about Ryan's Chuck Palahniuk Thing.
OHGODOHGOD GERARD. FIRE. And his poses. Just. The crazy hip-swish shit he'd try to get away with. Just. You know there'd be stop-motion sequences where Frank or someone got hold of the camera in a break and shot frame-for-frame of Gerard doing a hundred-yard pelvic thrust.
Spencer Smith is not getting enough attention here. And yet all I see when I close my eyes is his STRUT.
manipulant:
Okay so for superhero week, Spencer dresses as Catwoman. which makes pretty much everyone feel funny in their pants. \o/ BECAUSE SPENCER IS THE DARK HORSE. (Brendon especially feels funny in the pants area because Spencer has a WHIP and a UTILITY BELT so he's like. jealous as well as turned on. he has no frame of reference for this. what the everliving fuck.)
LOLOLOLOL BJORK LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL OHMYGOD. YES. Also YES to all of Ryan's slapfights ever, he has them with EVERYONE, except for Spencer because he's pretty sure Spencer would just coldcock him instead of slapping, and except for Patrick, because Ryan's pretty sure he'd just be DEAD because Patrick is a fierce little fucker.
PETE IN THE BACKGROUND, being yoinked out of frame. LOVE IT. like it becomes such a problem that eventually the photographers allot the time and money to spend on patrick's photos, coming up with ideas on how to photoshop pete OUT of the pictures. so it always looks like patrick's working with a lot of props - bouquets of sunflowers, balloons, very large dogs - but really it's either that or look at pete wentzfacing all over everything.
(hahahahahahaaaa, balloons. "Patrick, it's like you're the old dude in Up! You're even wearing the same clothes as him!")
GABE'S MAKESHIFT NAKED PUZZLE BASEMENT, like one time Brendon wanders down there with Pete and the next time anyone sees him, Brendon has a tattoo he doesn't remember getting, and his dick is painted purple. and it takes like three weeks for the paint to completely wear off. gabe says it was just some lighthearted hazing, and then ryan smacks him (by now it's a force of habit) and drags brendon away and bob has to intervene.
nobody was really expecting the Fight Club thing to be any good, but Bill and Gabe have this AMAZING photo where they're sitting on opposite sides of a fold-out table and Gabe is actually the buttoned-up narrator and Bill - fucking BILL - is Tyler Durden, taping up his swollen, bloody knuckles, a cigarette dangling from his busted lip. Frank has to take a moment or ten, because hnnnnnnngh.
HAHAHAHA TIME-LAPSE GERARD HIP-SWISH. where Gerard is all flustered and "SHUT UP, ASSHOLES, GOD" and Ryan is all "WHAT WERE YOU TRYING TO NUDGE OUT OF THE WAY, THERE? NEBRASKA?" and of course frankie cannot stand for that (especially since mikey isn't here to take up for gerard as well) so he's all YEAH THAT'S SO MUCH WORSE THAN HOW YOU POINT AT THINGS WITH YOUR DICK, ROSS. and ryan is all GASP, HOWDAREYOU, SIR, and patrick's all ...well, but. I mean. technically, isn't everyone sort of pointing at something with their dick? if only just the floor? because it's a vaguely pointy shape.
and everyone looks at him, all ......... until patrick's beet-red and pete's all tell me if your dick is ever pointing at me, please, and patrick punches him. spencer announces that they talk about dicks too much.
also let's talk about the week where Sarah Burton from McQueen is a SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME GUEST JUDGE and most of the dudes are all "...yay?" except for Pete and Gerard, who are both about to shit their pants.
look_alive:
Brendon gets overexcited and tries to ditch Gerard and scrap the sequin tights in favor of a Batman getup, but Gerard catches on almost immediately and gives him a wise talk about how we must not abandon our visions, even in the face of love and/or black Lycra. Brendon grumbles, but gives in only in favor of waiting for cover of dark to break in to Spencer and Ryan's room through the window, wearing the Batman getup. Which is actually more like he gets up on the roof and tries to rig up a grappling device to rappel down and push the window open. It does not work as planned. He ends up hanging on by one hand, the other frantically dialing Patrick's number to PLEASE OH SHIT PATRICK GET UP TO THE ROOF AND HAUL ME UP I'M STUCK AND SPENCER'S WINDOW DOESN'T OPEN FROM THE OUTSIDE AND FUCK- FUCK THERE IS A WASP NEST UNDER THIS WINDOW, PATRICK. PATRICK THERE ARE WASPS. ...DON'T ASK QUESTIONS, JUST BRING A FIRST-AID KIT.
Dude, Patrick is a fierce little fucker. I mean, under the sweet, I-don't-want-to-be-snarky exterior? Kid could fuck a homeslice up. Oh, and I'd have like, $50 that Spencer punched someone (probably Ryan) in the penis at least once during the season.
(...Now I REALLY want a photoshoot of Patrick Stump and sunflowers. Only, not with this bleach blond shit he has going on right now. I miss the ginger.)
They make the Up joke, and Pete spends the rest of the week saying things like, "I was hiding under your porch because I love you, Patrick." and getting high-fives from Gabe.
Before the paint wears off Brendon's dick, he spends considerable time and effort trying to see if any of the photographers will shoot him wearing nothing but soaking wet Fruit Of The Looms. Someone really needs to give Intern Bob a raise. In the end, he takes the pictures himself using Spencer's iPhone, subsequently sending them to everyone in Spencer's phonebook. Only good things come of this.
I feel like we need to take a sec RIGHT HERE to address the Patrick-Pete-Gabe triangle. Which is technically the Patrick-Pete-Gabe-Bill... parallelogram. Not sure how much Twitter you keep up with, but Pete and Gabe are currently, like. Dating. So like, Pete's all, "TELL ME IF YOUR DICK IS POINTING AT ME!:DD" directly followed by Gabe all, "THREEWAY! :DD" and Bill's all "EXCUSE YOU?! >:(" and there's this big ruckus that culminates in Bill bursting into tears and running off dramatically, Patrick grabbing the straight-iron out of Bob's hand and semi-accidentally concussing Pete with it, and Gabe hesitating a second before tearing off after William all, "NO BABY COME BACK IT'S OKAY! I GOT A VALU-PAK OF TROJANS LAST TIME WE HIT COSTCO!" ~cut to a camera interview with a tearful Bill, sniffling and puffy-eyed, like, "I- I just thought Gabe and I had something, you know? I thought it felt real, but /divashrughairtoss/ I guess it's no big deal, wh- whatever." and all that's heard of him next episode is plaintive warbling emanating from his room that sounds a lot like off-key Dashboard Confessional.
YES. THIS. PERFECT. Gerard keeps following her around, like, "Can I touch you..? No. No I mean it. Can I?" and Pete shows up to judging dressed like a tree. Inevitably, she and Spencer end up tight, talking about shoes and classic lines and timeless use of color. Gerard's cam interview for that week is just twenty minutes of him gaping at the camera and making incredulous, wounded noises.
...They finally take pity and hire another intern. Intern Toro. Hired straight out of Starbucks next to one of the shoots for his hair and his ability to not kill every single contestant at 7am when they all order variations of triple-caf quad-shot skinny soy lattes with two and a half pumps of sugar free vanilla, seven shakes of nutmeg, and SO HELP YOU if those beans aren't fair trade.
Frank gets all riled up at Bill and Gabe’s photo and runs off to Gerard all, "GEE! FUCK. I WANT YOU TO HIT ME AS HARD AS YOU CAN." But Gerard being Gerard is like, "DDDDDD: NO!" so someone, probably Intern Bob, has to intervene before Frank runs himself headfirst into a brick wall "FOR AUTHENTICITY, YOU PUSSY BITCHES."
manipulant:
so Bob slips Frankie some of the makeup and frankie GOES TO TOWN trying to make himself look like he has TWO BLACK EYES except he uses like straight black instead of, y'know, ACTUAL BRUISE COLORS so he's all bummed out until ryan takes pity on him, grabs some white greasepaint from his mime shit and steals some red, and turns him into TDK joker.
so, y'know, frankie's not BUMMED anymore, but he is kind of clambering all over EVERYONE, asking them if they want to see him make a pencil disappear. and he totally freaked bill out because while all this shit was happening, billiam was trying to recover from his swoon by taking a nap on the sofa in a backroom and had no idea until all of a sudden there's a frank on his chest, leering at him, tapping a pencil against his forehead til he wakes up.
so bill SHRIEKS THE GIRLIEST SHRIEK EVER and jumps up, which catapults frankie off of him and frank totally beans his head on the edge of the coffee table as he falls, and gabe comes RUSHING IN THE ROOM, all OH FUCK BILL ARE YOU KILLED, FRANKIE, I WILL FUCK YOUR SHIT UP and bill's fluttering his hands, trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING, and gabe takes the opportunity to, y'know, sweep william out of this room of crazy and into the peace of ~THE BASEMENT so things are marginally patched up between them when they resurface. plus frankie has a wicked cool goose-egg on his forehead and an ACTUAL black eye from where he fell, so everything worked out really well!
anyway brendon's knowledge of comic books is sort of pastede on yey to begin with, which is a perfect opportunity for gerard to covertly make a hell of a lot of fun of him, so gerard occasionally calls him jason todd until somebody - let's say intern Toro - overhears and snickers and Brendon is all >:| WHAT and toro's all wikipedia that shit, B. so Brendon does and at like 2 am there is a SHRIEK OF RAGE and spencer really, really wishes he hadn't traded his roommate Patrick for a pair of jeans and some sweet wing-tips from Bill because rooming with brendon means no beauty sleep ever.
(and now i just really want to make a flowchart of the roommate-trading that happens, and the bargaining that comes with all the switches)
and Brendon is SUPER BUTTHURT and plots ways to get revenge on Gerard's stupid FACE except they all keep blowing up in HIS face - like the time he tries to sabotage gerard's shampoo with bleach until he realizes that gerard doesn't really USE it and then a week after the fact, gerard washes his hair and it winds up looking brassy and fucked-up and INEXPLICABLY COOL and everyone's all OOOOOOOOOH and brendon's all GODDAMMIT >:|
and then bill and brendon come up with the GREATEST PLAN. SERIOUSLY THE GREATEST. bill is still mad at gabe for, y'know, being GABE and therefore twelve feet tall and still somehow in pete wentz's POCKET, and brendon is mad at GERARD WAY AND HIS STUPID PERFECT FACE and they are both operating under the assumption that sitcoms are actually reality, so bill cheerfully cozies up to travie to MAKE GABE INSANE WITH JEALOUSY, and travie is all what? huh? ...oh, okay, cool.
and brendon starts USURPING ALL OF FRANKIE'S TIME and they are like DUO OF DESTRUCTION and NO ONE IS SAFE and brendon tries teaching frankie how to do backflips and frankie makes brendon mainline a bunch of black flag and ryan is all WHAT THE HELL IS EVEN HAPPENING HOLY FUCK and everyone wakes up one morning and brendon has facial piercings and he's all 8DDDDDDDDDDDDD WE DID THEM WITH SAFETY PINS, SO FUCKING HARDCORE and spencer THROWS A FIT BECAUSE THAT SHIT IS NOT SAFE and brendon's all god spencer stop being such a buzzkill.
but it all ends in craziness because brendon teaches frankie how to run up a wall but frankie tries to do it on like some flimsy drywall during a shoot and goes CRASHING THROUGH.
look_alive:
Yeah, Frank pretty much attacks the photographers for the comic shoot like, GUYS, GUYS WE'RE GONNA GET ME HANGING UPSIDE DOWN FROM GRAPPLING WIRE OKAY? and he's totally broken out the oldschool green hair dye.
William, in his own weird brand of hypocrisy, is doing the shoot as Scarecrow, but when anyone tries to give him shit he's "the sexy villain from Batman! Didn't anyone see Batman Begins? Cillian Murphy! Come on, guys, what?!" and Gerard has to be forcibly restrained so he doesn't say or do anything to incite the compensatory protective wrath of already-keyed-up Gabe.
ASDHJKL JASON TODD. Yes. And someone, we won't say who but it was TOTALLY RYAN leaves a crow bar in his bed. And there are all these innocuous comments about maybe he'd want to use it in the shoot later? before he starts threatening to go all Red Hood on their asses YEAH, YEAH THAT'S RIGHT DICKSMACKS, HE TOTALLY READ THROUGH THAT WIKI.
Gerard has this MOMENT OF GLORY when his hair bleaches and he calls Mikey later to confide that he thinks he might be developing super powers- finally - or else he's a really late-blooming metamorphmagus. Mikey hangs up on him for the sixth time that week, but sends a box full of Gerard's Gryffindor gear to him anyway, because he's nice like that.
manipulant:
(can we just talk about how upset Gerard was when he took sorting quiz after sorting quiz after sorting quiz on the internet back in the day and ALL OF THEM either put him in gryffindor or hufflepuff? Because VERY SECRETLY gerard was pretty convinced he was a slytherin. BUT A GOOD SLYTHERIN! LIKE SNAPE! and mikey patted him on the shoulder and said it was just the internet and gerard got all huffy and was like yeah okay it's fine for YOU, you fucking RAVENCLAW. and mikey smirked a bit.)
look_alive:
(YES. THIS. But Mikey totally made it better by getting Gerard a full set of Gryffindor regalia, followed by an hour-long speech about how green would just make him look pallid- no, not in the good way.)
So Brendon has to get carted off for tetanus shots in his everyplace, but ultimately he counts it as a win, because fucking GERARD that FUCKER sees the crazy shit they did with the safety pins and turns white as a sheet and pukes all over Gabe's brand new purple Supra hightops he just got as a gift from Justin Bieber, so pretty much everyone wins. Except Gerard and Gabe. And Justin Bieber.
Tyra flips out when she comes for a house visit and the walls are all covered in shoe prints, but it's put into perspective when she sees how Brendon and Frank have drained the pool to use as a skate park and Travie's seen this as an excuse for an "installation piece" in spray paint tagging.
William is still flitting around making eyes at Travie whenever Gabe's around, occasionally calling Nick Scimeca for romantic advice. This means Patrick gets to listen to William's end of a lot of phone conversations that inevitably lead to, "...but. But I don't wanna get a lower back tattoo. Isn't that called a tramp stamp? Can't I just wear really tight pants or something? No, I know, I mean tighter. Like Ryan's."
Which is how Ryan vs. William Bitchfight #83 happens, Ryan walking in on William in his room wearing one pant leg, two cans of extra virgin olive oil spray, and nothing else. The only reason anyone survives is because Patrick steps in at the last second with, "So Bill, when did you want me to help you rework Everything We Had in Garage Band?" and nobody sees either of them for fourteen hours.
Meanwhile, Ryan Ross: Loki, Tim Drake, or..?
manipulant:
I vote Ryan Ross for Penguin. because HAHAHAHAHA. Also I have this mental image of William and, like, Brendon grocery shopping together, Brendon trailing after William, touching every box they go past, half a twizzler stuck out of his mouth, and William stopping in the baking aisle and spending seriously 15 minutes debating over which nonstick cooking spray looks the most...nonsticky.
Brendon finds a turkey baster, so, y'know, he's pretty much set for the next half hour as far as entertainment goes. (if he sucks it onto his skin it makes funny noises!) also he suggests that instead of cooking spray, they just go and get some 10-40 and an atomizer and get this shit DONE.
anyway I feel like I'm ignoring Gabe. which I think could be the really hilarious focus of an episode while Gabe's still on, like the producers are all oh! Shit! The dude in the basement! What's his deal? And so they set up a couple of night-vision cameras and dedicate another camera to just following Gabe around, with Funeral March of a Marionette playing in the background, probably. and it's more like Meerkat Manor than anything that would ever play on Bravo.
BUT I DIGRESS okay SUPERHEROES. so when the dust has settled from Brendon and Frankie's reign of terror and Brendon's mostly cool with Gerard again but still sort of generally upset because there was a CROWBAR in his BED, motherfuckers! He's going to put a, a fucking...a fucking HORSEHEAD in ROSS'S bed, see how funny he thinks THAT is! (which makes a producer stroke their nonexistent beard and contemplate a Godfather-type episode, for all of two seconds before the probability of actual death of a contestant comes to mind.)
anyway so Brendon gives himself a CRASH COURSE in superheroes and stuff and eventually settles on a fucking ANTIHERO, MAN, and Gerard shambles by Brendon's room one afternoon and sees Brendon messing around with what looks like a Rorschach mask and Gerard's all .......aw, fuck, why didn't I think of that?
and Brendon stealthily hands intern Toro a twenty.
look_alive:
HAHA OH MY GOD. That might work by sheer virtue of about 2% of the viewer base for the show having ANY idea what's going on. Like, Sexy Penguin, where Ryro just gets to strut around in front of the camera wearing a tailed tux and rocking the shit out of a monocle and an old-fashioned umbrella.
In the aftermath of the whole nonstick-pants thing, Ryan is filmed around the edge of his door in the throes of high dudgeon. Spencer sitting on his bed and nodding occasionally through a glazed expression as Ryan splutters about "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO GET CRISCO OUT OF DESIGNER DENIM?!"
Gabe's crew quickly begin to sympathize with the interns, as he takes a page out of Pete's book and starts treating them like an entourage of PA's. Generally it's just a lot of, "Here, hold this." to the dude holding the mic, which is generally okay until it's time to feed Gabe's basement menagerie and mic guy ends up with five feet of python wrapped around his shoulders and a grass snake in each pocket.
Brendon is totally stoked on Rorschach and spends two whole days preparing and "getting in to character" by running around and leaping out at other contestants from dark corners in a rhinestoned Gucci trench. Gerard nearly loses his shit, but is saved from having to break his avowed pacifism by hair and makeup explaining to Brendon that there is no way he's doing a shoot with his entire head covered. In the end, he and Gerard end up right back where they started, in sequined Lycra monstrosities vaguely reminiscent of Kid Flash and Aquaman, respectively.
Saporta is coerced with relative ease into a Superman-type getup, once he realizes that it's basically a whole bunch of giant arrows calling attention to his crotch. He's fully on board the second techs start setting up suspension wires.
Which leaves Travie. Someone somewhere is a secret nerd, because he ends up in this totally understated Alex Wilder from Runaways getup that's mostly just some hipster glasses and the instructions to "Now give us evil. No, not the Jafar-face. Secret evil. Nobody knows what you're up t - OH FINE, JUST LOOK PENSIVE. CAN YOU HANDLE THAT?" At which point Gerard, who is- tragically, he feels- the only one who TRULY UNDERSTANDS WHAT IS GOING ON HERE storms the set and starts trying to give Travie a blow-by-blow of the first story arc, which quickly devolves into a lot of flailing hand gestures and shouting about velociraptors. The only way they're able to finish the shoot is because by the end, Travie actually does look murderous.
So the superhero shoot is basically a disaster, and nobody's really surprised, but in the end interns Bob and Toro count themselves the true winners of the round, having made about a grand apiece through a mixture of extortion, bribery, and information trade.
And the person who gets voted off that week is, oh, let’s say Travie.
IN CASE YOU MISSED THE LINKS IN THE BODY OF THE FIC, HERE, HAVE SOME EXTENDED SCENES. ALSO A FAKE TWITTER.